It’s no secret: I am a big fan of Eat Your Books.
For those not in the know, Eat Your Books is not all about scoffing printed tracts – as appealing as that sounds. No, it is all about being able to keep track of your cookbooks and find the recipes in them quickly and easily.
I’ve been a member for well over a year now and would be lost without it. The nerdy librarian in me would love to be have the time to organise my books and recipes really thoroughly, so Eat Your Books is heaven sent. I am able to assign a category or two (referred to as bookmarks) to each book and recipe. But the real genius behind this for me is that you can find recipes by typing in an ingredient or ingredients. So, if I have a couple of bananas looking rather the worse for wear in the fruit bowl, I can interrogate my cookbooks by typing in bananas and chocolate and up comes a list of 39 recipes that I have access to which include those two ingredients: chocolate banana loaf cake with rum soaked raisins anyone?
Similarly you can ask for a specific type of dish. If I fancy baking a cheesecake, I type in cheesecake and get 54 results. In the unlikely event I wanted a chocolate cheesecake, I would refine my search for and I get 15 results. It’s just brilliant – I’ve used so many recipes I’d never have found otherwise.
You can see what books I have on my bookshelf by clicking on the Eat Your Books badge on my sidebar.
But it’s not just about the books – oh no – food magazines are included as are some of the best food blogs. I had to put “some of the best” because my blog, apparently, is one of them. Add a blog to your collection and you can link direct to the recipes within it. Searches can be made for your complete collection or can be limited to say, magazines only. You can filter by recipe type, ethnicity, course, occasion and a number of other categories.
Not all books have been indexed yet, but progress is steadily being made and a number of my requests for indexing a book have been answered. The more people who join and request a book to be indexed, the more likely it is that it will be done. However, members keen to get a favourite book indexed as quickly as possible, are able to do it themselves.
It’s a good social networking tool too; it enables you to connect with other cookbook loving folk. See how many other members own your book or subscribe to the same blogs as you and find out who they are. If you’re really interested, you can find out how many books you have in common too. Why not read reviews or even submit your own? feeling chatty? Take part in forum discussions or read the many interesting and informative articles on the blog.
$25 for an annual subscription or $2.50 per month is a very reasonable investment for those moments when you just can’t think of what to cook, or where that favourite brownie recipe is lurking.
Tamarind & Saffron: Favourite Recipes from the Middle East – Claudia Roden
this thai vegetarian one I have!
Anne Willan Good Food No Fuss
Frugal food by Delia Smith – and I’d love them to index the Healthy Food Guide magazine
All of Mary Berry’s books 🙂
Ainsley Harriet’s meals in minutes
I love Mary Berry’s dessert books
Green and blacks chocolate books
Wow – I’ve been searching for something like this for years! Going to go and check it out now, looks absolutely brilliant. I’d love all of Jamie’s books to be listed
A romatic book
Any Goodhousekeeping
Claire D
Nigella Lawson’s puddings
Any of the Good Housekeeping ones!
Some gluten-free cookbooks!
Delia Smith – How To Cook
Anything from Slimming World
Jamie oliver
Michelle pierce
The Golden Book of Baking
More recipe books relating to people with diabetic problems. my husband has type 2 diabetes and I like to cook/bake according to what will help him control this.
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EYB are great im telling all my friends about these…….I cant credit this site enough
The Last Food of England by Marwood Yeatman and Anya Yeatman.
Annie Bell’s Vegetable book – Rachelinliskeard
“We Sure Can!” By Sarah Hood
Food from Your Garden from Reader’s Digest. It’s not a cook book only as it has gardening tips too, but it does have recipes for the food you can grow.
Alison Holst
Any of the Nigella books
I’m not sure what they have now but would love to see Antonio Carluccio: The Collection indexed 🙂 xx
I would love to see all of Jamie Oliver’s cookbooks indexed!
Plenty by Yottam Ottelenghi as people talk about it so much
Any Nigella Lawson books.
Simon Rimmer’s vegetarian recipes.
Eat my books! Fab!
A W.I one I bought which has no index!
any jamie oliver
Any of the Nigel Slater books
Love Eat My Books 🙂 xxx
Raw food children pack lunch cook book
A veggie kids one.
Low GI recipes
Delia Smith’s How to Cook
Oops, forgot to say that I’ve loads of books for the slow cooker and, because it tends to be a case of throwing things in before work, it would be great to find the recipe first time
Genius!At present I end up sitting on the sofa with a pile of books which I flick through to find that one and only elusive recipe that I know is in one of the books…
Ready Steady Cook for Kids by Joanna Farrow
more veggie cookbooks!
Love Eat My Books…
I still love the old Bero Baking Book, that would be fab to see as my copy is over 30 years old!
Antonio Carluccio: The Collection
A Cook’s Journey to Japan by Sarah Marx Feldner.
My vintage edition of Joy of Cooking.
Ooh, that’s a hard one! I think that aside from any published cookbook, I would most want my mother’s recipe collection indexed. I’ll have to set aside the time to get that done. 🙂
I’d have to look up what they have now, but off the cuff, i’d like Nourishing Traditions to be indexed.
I would like to see Working Cook indexed, as well as Hiroko’s Japanese Kitchen.
Steamy Kitchen 🙂
I would like to see “We Sure Can!” By Sarah Hood
or
“100James, Jellies, Preserves & Pickles” by Gloria Nicol
or
“Arabella Boxer’s Book of English Food”
or
“Bulgarian Rhapsody by Linda Forristal”
I have been a member of EYB for over 2 years and I think it is absolutely THE best idea anyone ever had! I “browse” my library often and come across recipes I never knew I had. I’d like to tackle indexing one of my cookbooks that isn’t part of their library…soon!
Cathy Keller
I LOVE EYB – It’a a very clever concept!
I love Eat Your Books. When I win the free membership I will reconcile my cookbooks against the ones they have index.;)
I have a slew of foreign-language books that I’d love to see indexed.
Miette
Eat your Books is a terrific resource! Love to see any Canadian restaurant cookbooks indexed, as well as older versions of classic cookbooks that are hard to find, like Fanny Farmer.
I love the concept and have nearly 800 books, so it would be awesome to win the membership
any and all of darina allen’s cookbooks! thanks for the giveaway 😉
Would love to become a part of Eat Your Books! It’s another way to help me be more organized.
whoop whoop! Chocolate Log
If i’m being honest then really any book as long as it has good recipes in it
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We have some big Delia books so this would be handy
What a brilliant idea! As much as I adore my cookbook collection this would make life a lot easier. Sign me up for the prize draw!
This sounds like a great idea. It is not a bit time consuming loading all the labels for your recipes in the beginning though, or do they do that for you? I do quite like flipping through the pages of a cookery book, and I use the index to find recipes, but hrrrm.. yes, I don’t think this Eat Your Books is a bad idea! 😀
I love Eat Your Books and have a lifetimes membership already. It saves hours of trawling through my collection of books. My The link to my books is on both my Blogs if anyone wants a nosey as to what I have. 🙂
Ilove Eat My Books & deep, dark chocolate…yum!
I would like to see Jerusalem indexed but I haven’t been to look at the site yet so maybe it is?
Stephanie Alexander’s Kitchen Garden Companion: Dig, Plant, Water, Grow, Harvest, Chop, Cook. Great ideas and recipes, but almost too beautiful to dot with stock!
love food, love chocolate love Eat your books.
Indulge by Rowie Dillon would be another great book to have indexed !
So good to see the Edmonds cookbook in there!
Another good one which could be added is ‘Comfort – Food for Sharing’ (a book compiled of ‘delicious meals and baking from New Zealand’s top food writers’ and supporting the Starship Foundation)
Simon Rimmer’s vegetarian recipes.
Fantastic blog and loving EYB
Most of the books I own don’t appear on Eat your Books, so I’d like to see some older UK books like Gail Duff’s Vegetarian Cook Book appear in the lists
Love, love, love Eat Your Books.I love reading other people’s comments on recipes. Love that they index blogs too. So invaluable.thanks for the great giveaway!
I have a membership to eat your books and while I probably use it less than you I am finding it really useful after being a bit unsure about it at the start. It does help me return to my books when I sometimes feel there is a recipe in my house rather than on the WWW. And I really enjoy the blog with little snippets of information about foodie issues – even though I read it only from time to time
Any of Nigel Slater’s!
I would like to see ‘How to Cook for Crohn’s and Colitis: More Than 200 Healthy, Delicious Recipes the Whole Family’ by Brenda Roscher